‘Process duty?’
‘On the sale of your vessel, the Bucentaur. If the affidavits of fiscal gain and letters of dispensation signed by the agents are accurate, then the figures for anchorage tax and mercantile process duty are out by a factor of thirty-two per cent.’
The true figure was twenty-six, but I wanted him to be alarmed. A startled mind is even easier to control.
‘Thirty-two?’
‘In wharfinger revenues alone, it is off by a margin of point nine. But mercantile process is our main concern, the department’s key area of discrepancy. The freight stamps are overdue by…’
+Eight years.+
‘Eight years,’ said Nayl, pretending to consult his slate.
‘Eight years?’ Strykson said, sitting down.
+And the tonnage band is wrongly declared.+
‘And the tonnage band is wrongly declared,’ Kys said.
+The Bucentaur was a class seven.+
‘Because the Bucentaur was a class seven,’ she finished.
‘Throne,’ Strykson whispered. ‘What is the duty remaining?’
‘The duty outstanding at this time,’ I said, ‘allowing for interest, is…’
+Is this, Athen. How long were you working for the cartel?+
Still caught up in his financial worries, Strykson shrugged. ‘No more than four years,’ He thought he was telling us about freight stamps.
+Who brought you in?+
‘Akunin and Vygold.’
+How many runs did you make to the Mergent Worlds?+
‘Nine,’ Strykson murmured, believing he had just explained how hard it was to get the fiscal reserve to advance mortgage on a ship sale.
‘Yes, that is always a difficulty,’ I said aloud.
‘The sale was handled by the brokers of the Navis Nobilite,’ Strykson said. ‘Gods, this is terrible. I need caffeine. Do you need caffeine?’
+You don’t need caffeine.+
‘I don’t need caffeine,’ he said, sitting down again, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, what did you just ask me?’
+Why did you leave the cartel?+
‘I’d earned enough. I mean, more than I’d ever dreamed. I was tired of the void. It seemed like a good opportunity.’ He paused and looked up, puzzled. ‘Was I… was I just talking about why I retired?’ he said.
I tightened my mental hold slightly, like a wrestler changing grips.
+No, Athen. You were telling me who you worked for. Who organised Contract Thirteen.+
‘Oh well, it was Akunin’s show. Him and Thekla, to begin with. They brought the rest of us in. Akunin liked to boast that his orders came from Jader Trice. But Thekla once told me that was just what Akunin liked to say. Pretending he had a direct line to the chief provost. The actual orders came via the Secretists.’
+Who are the Secretists?+
Strykson looked up and smiled. In his mind, he was gleefully telling me how the Navis Nobilite brokers couldn’t be trusted with a decent ship-sale if their eyes depended on it. His mouth was saying, ‘I don’t know. That’s the point. The Secretists are secret. They enforce the will of the Diadochoi. They cover up and protect his actions. And they’re bloody good at it too. Throne, I wouldn’t want to cross one of them! I met one once, at a dinner. Revoke, his name was. Akunin’s chief contact. The man was a monster. A stone killer.’
+What else can you tell me about this Revoke?+
‘Nothing, not much. Yellow eyes, that’s what I remember. Yellow frigging eyes…’ Strykson’s voice trailed off. As far as he would remember, he’d just said, ‘Never trust a broker. They don’t include windfall tariff in their estimates, and they try to claw thirteen per cent back at the sale.’
+What is the Diadochoi?+
‘The heir. The successor. The one that shall be.’
‘Is Jader Trice the Diadochoi?+
Strykson laughed out loud and stood up. ‘Of course not! He’s just the chief facilitator! The Diadochoi’s right-hand man.’
+Sit back down.+
He sat, subdued suddenly.
+The Diadochoi is someone more senior than the chief provost?+
‘Yes. Of course,’ Strykson said quietly.
With Zeph’s eyes, I glanced at Kys and Harlon.
+What is the purpose of Contract Thirteen?+ Kys sent seductively.
Strykson looked up. ‘To obtain data engines from the Mergent Worlds, Spica Maximal particularly, and supply them to the Ministries here on Eustis Majoris.’
+For what purpose?+
Strykson blinked. ‘I honestly have no idea,’ he said.
He wasn’t lying.
‘Let us consider your duty claims and compensatories,’ I said. ‘Oh, all right…’ sighed Athen Strykson.
SIXTEEN
LATE AFTERNOON, THE city blurred by rain outside the windows. The Special Crime office should have been bustling at this hour. But Interior Cases had suspended everyone the morning before, and technicians had dismantled all the cogitators and taken them away, along with the mountains of paperwork and file cartons.
The quiet was funereal. Even the air systems had been turned off. Rickens wandered the length of the main office space, his cane tapping. This was so wrong. In all his years of devoted service, he’d never…
He heard a hatch open behind him, and turned. Sankels, big and barrel-chested in his service uniform, strode up between the empty desks until he was face to face with Rickens. Straight-backed compared to Rickens’s hunched posture, Sankels was significantly younger, taller and more massive than the deputy magistratum. He looked down at Rickens with hooded eyes.
‘You got my message?’
‘Yes,’ said Rickens.
‘It’s for the best,’ Sankels said. ‘A man with your career record and good reputation, with retirement prospects. It makes sense. This is a dreadful mess, Rickens, and there’s no need to be dragged down with it. A quiet resignation, retirement on non-specific health grounds. Your pension will be secure. You’ll be clear of anything that transpires.’
‘And you come in and clean house once I’m gone?’
‘Simply put,’ said Sankels. He held out his hand, palm up. ‘So?’
‘So?’
‘Your resignation, Deputy Rickens?’
‘You honestly thought I’d fold and make it that easy for you, Sankels?’ Rickens said.
The head of Interior Cases coloured slightly and withdrew his hand. ‘Don’t do this,’ he breathed through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t even begin to—’
‘I am an officer of the Imperial Magistratum,’ Rickens said. ‘Sworn to uphold civic law and the justice of the Emperor of Mankind. I protect the codes and practices that make our common freedom possible. I am not going to stand aside and make things easy for you.’
Sankels turned away and then snapped back round again, aiming a finger at Rickens’s face. Rickens didn’t flinch. ‘You don’t even begin to comprehend what you’re dealing with!’ Sankels shouted.
‘No, I don’t,’ Rickens agreed calmly. ‘I have absolutely no idea what is going on, what great darkness Interior Cases is closing ranks to conceal, except that my department has clearly stumbled on something important and has therefore been selected to take the fall.’
‘You—’
‘I’ll finish what I’m saying, Sankels. I know your department’s close connection to the Ministry of Sub-sector Trade, I know your close co-operative relationship with the chief provost. I don’t question that the attempt on Provost Trice’s life the other night was an act to be deplored by us all. I accept there may be matters of confidence, state secrets that I cannot be party to. But I will not allow my department to be sacrificed. If I resign, there will be no process of inquiry. No impediment to the swift and total disintegration of Special Crime.’
Rickens took a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. ‘I have been in correspondence today, sir, with the Justiciary, the Advocate’s department, and the office of the Subsector Arbites. I have consulted with legal counsel. If I refu
se to resign, you’ll have to impeach me or charge me. Either way, there will be a thorough legal examination of this matter. No cover up. No conspiracy. If the accusations levelled against this department, and the men and women who serve it, are true, you will have to evidence those facts and develop a case that the Justiciary can try. If we’re guilty, let us be found guilty. I will not be party to a backroom coup and the indiscriminate usurpation of constitutional process by a department that, in my opinion, is too powerful already. Interior Cases is part of the law, Sankels, not above it.’
‘And you’ll refuse to resign quietly, just to prove that point?’
‘I won’t budge, Sankels. I see it as my duty to the Throne itself.’
Sankels looked Rickens up and down slowly. ‘Investigation and trial will destroy you, Rickens. Your reputation, your good name. I was trying to spare you the shame and ignominy.’
‘I don’t think that’s what you were doing at all,’ Rickens said. He walked past Sankels and headed for the door. ‘I’m going home now. Tomorrow morning, I have the first of what I imagine will be a considerable number of meetings with Justiciary counsel in preparation for your investigation. They will of course require access to all the files and digital documents you removed from this office. And I’m sure that one of their first recommendations will be for me to contact the Officio Inquisitorus Planetia to inform them of the impending legal action.’ Sankels started to say something, then closed his mouth. ‘Good night to you, sir,’ said Rickens, and left the room.
Sankels stood alone for a moment, then took his hand-vox from its belt pouch. He selected a secure channel.
‘This is Sankels. I’m going to need a meeting with the chief provost at his earliest convenience.’
ORFEO CULZEAN WAS sipping nettle tea and reading when the fraters called upon him unannounced. It was early evening, and the climate in the Regency Viceroy suite had been notched up to counter the inclement weather outside. Culzean sat at a desk, surrounded by old manuscripts, ancient documents recorded in slate-form and crumbling books. The current volume under inspection was written in a xeno script, and he was having to hold up a bulky brass translation viewer in front of his eyes like opera glasses. The simivulpa was playing under his chair.
Orfeo Culzean had almost filled the memory of a data-slate with notes from his reading. Enuncia. He wondered if it could possibly be true.
‘The fraters have come to see you,’ Leyla Slade said.
Culzean lowered his viewer. ‘Now?’
‘Shall I tell them you’re not available?’
‘No, I am in their employ. Show them in. But, Leyla?’
‘Sir?’
‘Lurk, please.’
She nodded. She showed the fraters in.
‘Frater Arthous. Frater Stefoy,’ Culzean said as he rose to his feet.
The men bowed. Not so much respect today, Culzean thought. Their real eyes were patched.
‘We look upon you, Orfeo Culzean,’ said Stefoy.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ Culzean said. ‘Would you care for refreshment?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Arthous. He took a small piece of folded silk out of his pocket with his scarred fingers and unwrapped it. In the centre was the buckled piece of focus ring.
‘For your collection, as requested.’
Culzean took it and examined it. ‘Wonderful. Thank you. But I can’t believe the two of you came here just to give me this.’
‘No,’ said Stefoy. ‘The magus-clancular asked us to attend you and update you on the prospect.’
‘As per your advice,’ Arthous said, ‘the Fratery has been examining the meniscus to see what determiners may have changed, and how this may effect the likelihood of the prospect.’
‘You’ll be pleased to know that the percentage likelihood has not declined. Indeed,’ said Stefoy, ‘it may have increased. Though still living, Trice may have been altered as a determiner.’
‘I expected as much. Trice will be fearful, and cautious. That will stay his hand, and to our advantage. Good. I’m pleased.’
Arthous took out a piece of paper. ‘Also one of the newer determiners has been read as becoming significantly more important during the last ten hours.’
‘Indeed. A negative?’ asked Culzean.
‘No, a positive,’ replied Arthous.
Culzean took the paper and read it. ‘This name again. Do we know who it is? Who it means?’
‘We’re looking into that now,’ replied Stefoy. ‘Belknap,’ Culzean murmured to himself. ‘Belknap…’
THE GOOD DOCTOR had gone for the day, Kara was asleep, and Miserimus was quiet. Carl Thonius left his whirring cogitators and the wall of pasted index cards for a moment and walked about the halls and landings of the house to clear his head and loosen his limbs.
He felt ill, and he knew why. He tried to put it out of his mind, but it nagged. The need, pecking at the shell of his resolve. It should never have got like this, he thought to himself. Never. He was a fool and if he didn’t stop he would be found out and everything would— Everything would be bad.
Carl paused in front of a full-length mirror in the hallway. He saw himself, looking tired, sort of ill. His skin was pale and dry, his eyes shadowed. But still, he thought, I cut quite a dash. The black tunic coat and trousers, the black boots, a subtle look today, though that subtlety was perfectly counterpointed by the cazurite brooch on his lapel.
Then he thought about what he was doing. Looking in a mirror. Looking in a mirror, in a mirror, in—
He tried to look away, but the feeling had dug too deep already. He walked into his room, opened a locked compartment in his trunk, and took out one of the parcels wrapped in red tissue paper.
He unwrapped it, his hands shaking, drew a deep breath, and looked down into the flect. What marvels this time? What rapture would— He went blind. No, not blind. Deaf. No, not deaf— Falling. He was falling. There was a pit filled with the darkest smoke of Old Night, and the flicker of forgotten suns, spinning into oblivion, and an ochone moaning that crackled like an untuned vox.
And there was something there in the darkness, swooping around him as he fell into the infinite, his mouth screaming but making no sound.
Something pale and cold, yet burning, something anguished and spawned, something old.
Something so dreadful. Sheer, inarticulate terror infected Carl Thonius like a disease and snorted like a beast behind his eyes.
His blood froze solid, crackling in his veins. His heart seized, a dead, leaden weight in his chest. His eyes caught fire.
And he died.
SEVENTEEN
A TERRIBLE, STUNNING blow struck the back of his head. It was the floor. He lay on his back, twitching, gurgling, then went still.
Seconds passed with glacial slowness. The cogitators clicked and hummed, auto-processing. Lamplight glinted off the open riddle box and the shattered flect on the floor.
With a sudden gasp, Carl sat up. He panted furiously, blinking. He tried to remember where he was. Who he was. There was a terrible taste in his mouth.
He looked around, and began to remember. There on the floor beside him, the broken flect.
‘Oh, gods…’ Thonius mumbled. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
He pulled himself to his feet. His skin was gooseflesh, his clothes cold and lank with sweat. He tried not to think of the things he’d witnessed in that moment. Stupid! STUPID!
‘Bad trip,’ he said out loud in a shaky voice. ‘That’s all it was. Bad trip. Your own stupid fault…’
He bent down and collected up the pieces of the broken flect, wrapped them in the tissue paper and hid them in his luggage.
Suddenly, he snapped round. How long had he been out? He looked at the chron on the desk. An hour. He’d lost an entire hour at least.
Something cried out and made him jump. For a second he thought it was the lamenting moan that had called out to him as he’d fallen into the pit and—
There was no pit. No darkness. No moanin
g. He breathed hard to control his panic. That had all been a dream, just a spasm in his mind. Everything was okay.
The cry came again. From along the hall.
‘Shit!’ Carl said. ‘Skoh!’
THONIUS UNLOCKED THE door and looked in. Skoh sat on the chair staring at him.
‘About time,’ he said. ‘I’ve been calling. Calling for ages.’
‘Well, I’m here now. What’s the problem?’
Skoh raised his manacled hands. ‘Same as usual. Cramps.’
‘I thought the doctor gave you a liniment?’ said Carl.
‘For my skin, not the cramps,’ said Skoh.
‘All right,’ Carl walked into the room until he was just beyond the reach of the floor chain. ‘You know the drill. Show me.’
Skoh raised his hands, to show that both of the heavy steel manacles were locked tight around his wrists.
Carl took the key from his pocket and tossed it to Skoh. The hunter caught it, undid his cuffs and began to rub his wrists.
‘That’s enough,’ said Carl.
‘Give me a minute,’ Skoh replied, flexing his aching joints.
‘Now,’ said Carl.
With a glare, Skoh locked the manacles back in place again. He tossed the key back to Carl.
‘Show me.’
‘What the hell’s wrong with your nose?’ Skoh asked.
‘What?’
‘You’re bleeding,’ Skoh said, nodding his head at Thonius. Carl felt at his face, saw the red on his fingertips.
‘Damn it!’ he said and went out, slamming the door and locking it. He hurried to the hall mirror. His nose was bleeding freely, and his eyes were hideously bloodshot. ‘Oh, Throne…’ he whispered.
FEAVER SKOH WAITED a few seconds, then slipped his hands out of the cuffs. He had re-locked them loose, but even so it skinned his knuckles pulling them off. The doctor’s greasy liniment helped. Without that lubrication…
He went to the door, knowing it was locked. No time for caution now. This was the chance, the fleeting chance.